Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is an American psychologist who is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.

In 1964, he received a Ph.D. in psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry (who had primary responsibilities for initiating human split-brain research).

He is also the editor of The Cognitive Neurosciences book series published by the MIT Press, which features the work of nearly 200 scientists and is a sourcebook for the field.

[9] He has performed numerous studies and done large amounts of research on split brain patients to provide a higher quality understanding into the lives of those affected by this rare phenomenon.

Through Gazzaniga’s studies a much greater understanding of the split brain phenomenon has been brought to other physiologists as well as the general population of the world.

The stimuli flashed to the right visual field were processed by the brain’s left hemisphere, which contains the language center, so he was able to press a button to indicate he saw the stimulus and could verbally report what he had seen.

When they modified the experiment to have him point to the stimulus that was presented to his left visual field and not have to verbally identify it, he was able to perform this task accurately.

When the word “girlfriend” was flashed to his left visual field, and thus his right hemisphere, he could not verbally say the name of his “crush”, but he then spelled out the name “Liz” with Scrabble tiles.